I'm linking up with That Artsy Reader Girl for another Top Ten Tuesday.
My first online book reviews were on a Facebook profile widget (back when those were a thing) called weRead, which let me show everyone what I was currently reading. When Facebook stopped allowing custom profile widgets, the data moved over to a standalone site, where I continued to post my reviews until the day the site shut down without warning and my reviews were lost forever. At that point I grieved my losses and then switched to Goodreads, which I'd been reluctant to do sooner because all of my books were already logged in weRead (oh, the irony).
Without further ado, here are the first 10 books for which I posted a review on Goodreads.
1. Kisses from Katie by Katie J. Davis with Beth Clark
Sample line: "The individual stories will make the poverty of this Ugandan village become real to you and move you to want to do something. At the same time, the book felt somehow sanitized, dealing with poverty and disease but not with anything that could truly shock a Christian bookstore audience, and definitely not dealing with complicated issues like paternal racism."
4 stars: Read the whole review here.
2. Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Sample line: "This is a YA novel to hand to a gay teen who isn't angsting about their orientation, just about normal high school stuff, but to give them a narrator they can relate to."
4 stars: Read the whole review here.
3. The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff
Sample line: "There is clearly a kind of idolatry of the native, holding them up as a model of purity while still referring to them as uncivilized and somewhat odd and mysterious."
3 stars: Read the whole review here.
4. Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent
Sample line: "This book could have gone really wrong if it had been written only from Ron's perspective, as his view of events came dangerously close to the trope of 'homeless angel in disguise teaches the rich man the meaning of life.'"
4 stars: Read the whole review here.
5. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Sample line: "Lockhart beautifully illustrates the dilemmas involved in being an intelligent woman, from her description of the three ways most girls act around groups of guys to her breakdown of Frankie's thought processes as she tries to avoid being seen as too meek, too aggressive, too sexual, too anything that boxes her in."
5 stars: Read the whole review here.
6. 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam
Sample line: "Although I expected this book to be a rather fuzzy self-help book full of platitudes about the value of each moment and empty encouragement to stop being so distracted, I found instead that the book was chockfull of research, statistics, and practical guidance."
5 stars: Read the whole review here.
7. Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
Sample line: "Brown manages to provide a model of wholehearted living while sharing plenty of stories of times she made mistakes, which makes her trustworthy because she is both practicing what she preaches and imperfect enough not to be written off as insincere."
5 stars: Read the whole review here.
8. Emma by Jane Austen
Sample line: "If you've ever had a crush on someone, you'll resonate with the depictions of how easy it is to read meaning into another person's actions and words, imagining reciprocated affection where there is none."
4 stars: Read the whole review here.
9. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Sample line: "In addition to powerfully portraying the damage that rape can create into someone's life, Anderson also works in elements of what some call 'rape culture': the fact that Melinda is constantly told what to do (by parents, teachers, etc.) without her own wishes being taken into account, that her silence is continually interpreted by others as consenting to do the things they've asked or told her to do, and that when she is able to say "no" to a friend, she gets steamrolled with 'You have to! You have to!'"
5 stars: Read the whole review here.
10. My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Sample line: "I didn't find out until partway through that half of the book is Reggie Pepper stories, some of which are more or less rough drafts for stories later developed as Wooster and Jeeves stories. It definitely works better to have two separate characters (Wooster and Jeeves) than to have Reggie Pepper going on about how stupid he is except for when he randomly has brilliant ideas."
2 stars: Read the whole review here.
Do you review books on Goodreads?
Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Magician's Gambit, A View from the Bridge, The Shallows, and America's Public Schools
Five years ago I was reading: Americanah and War and Peace
Ten years ago I was reading: Cod
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